December 1, 2022
Jane Kershaw, University of Oxford
“Across the Black and Caspian Seas: Silver and the Viking Expansion”
Silver, traded in exchange for slaves and furs, is often seen as the major driver of the Viking expansion into Eurasia. Yet despite written and (limited) archaeological evidence for Rus’ trade with Byzantium across the Black Sea, the Rus’ received little, if any, silver in return. By contrast, hundreds of thousands of extant Islamic silver dirhams are recorded in Scandinavia and the Baltic. Recent geochemical work indicates that surviving dirhams comprise just a fraction of the numbers that originally made their way north: dirham silver was melted down to cast into rings and ingots not just in the Baltic but across the Scandinavian world, and from an earlier date (the first half of the ninth century) than traditionally assumed.
According to the silver record, then, the balance of trade between Rus’ and the Byzantine and Islamic Empires is highly skewed toward the latter: from a northern perspective, Rus’ trade with Constantinople appears to have been of peripheral importance only. But is silver alone a reliable proxy for north-orientated trade? What significance should we attach to the documented trade in silk and other luxury products? This paper questions the role of such imports within Scandinavian economic and social spheres. It considers why the Rus’ risked their lives on the Dnieper to reach the markets of the Byzantine capital.
Jonathan Shepard, University of Oxford [Zoom]
“The Rus and the Black Sea Zone: Late Arrivals?”
This paper will glance at the networks and exchanges involving peoples as far north as the Baltic and those of the steppes and points still further south during Antiquity. But the main concern is with the grouping known to outsiders as the Rhos / Rūs / Russi: initially of Nordic stock, its adherents soon adopted some cultural traits of the populations it encountered from quite soon after they began travelling far into the landmass east of the Baltic. There is evidence that they were plying riverways leading down to the Dnieper much earlier than previously supposed, and deluxe artefacts from the Byzantine world were known to them. However, it was silver from the Islamic world that drew the Rus east, and demand for it shaped their main commercial axis in the ninth century. The Rus did traverse the Black Sea zone, to trade or occasionally raid. Cherson on the Crimea was most probably a Rus port of call, and its culturo-religious life may have appealed to some. But the Byzantines may swiftly have taken steps to channel their movements so as to deter Rus raiding and settlement on the Black Sea. Things only changed drastically around the end of the ninth century, with the beginning of Rus settlement in the Middle Dnieper region and the opening of a direct sealink to Constantinople. Overland trading with Cherson continued, with nomadic peoples often acting as intermediaries. Slaves and silks were prime commodities, judging by evidence for the mid-tenth century, when the sealink boomed.
February 2, 2023
Rodrigo Pacheco Ruiz, Southampton University
“Documenting Archaeological Sites Using Deep Sea Robotics”
During 2014-2017 the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project (MAP), discovered and studied 60 new shipwrecks in the Bulgarian Black Sea ranging from the Early Greek Period to the 19th Century as well as a coastal settlement (Ropotamo) with uninterrupted activity since the Chalcolithic until the Ottoman period. An unbroken pattern of trade and exchange, warfare and communication that reaches back into prehistory, and because of the anoxic conditions of the Black Sea (the lack of oxygen) below a certain depth, some of the wrecks survive in incredible condition. Amongst these finds a number of unusually well-preserved Late Roman Byzantine and Medieval ships where found using state-of-the-art deep-sea robotics. This paper will describe the ways that the team discovered, mapped and studied such sites and how these significant findings have helped us understanding more about the complexity of seafaring in the Black Sea before during and after the Medieval Period.
Johan Rönnby, Södertörn University
“Sea Change, Seafaring and Long-Term History: A Maritime Archaeological Perspective“
After the end of the last glaciation, water broke through at the Bosporus, turning a former freshwater lake into the body of water that since the ancient Greek period we call the Black Sea. Large coastal areas that were previously land became submerged by a rising sea level. How dramatic this course was, has been debated, but new underwater archeological investigations indicates that the process has been relatively protracted and yet still affected prehistoric settlement throughout later prehistory into the Bronze Age.
Peoples, cultures, and powerful states have over millennia arisen and fallen around the inland sea’s varying coasts. People have settled at river mouths, in delta areas and at good harbor locations. Shallow beaches adjacent to lagoons have provided favorable places for fishing and hunting, while hard-to-reach rocky coasts and islands have sometimes offered shelter in troubled times. Despite a very varied history, the maritime environment has, with its limitations and opportunities, formed the platform and basis that people around the Black Sea have lived and engaged with Water can further connect people over large areas and seafaring and waterborne contacts have been a constantly recurring “maritime durée” in Black Sea history. This activity has left its mark on the bottom of the Black Sea through many uniquely well-preserved shipwrecks. During the Black Sea MAP project, 65 old ships were found in the deep darkness. In the paper some of the most significant wrecks will be presented regarding construction, possible cargo and historical context. However, the aim is also to discuss the role ships play in the various social contexts they belong to. On a general theoretical level, this concerns the entanglement between us and our things and the role of material culture for social change. How do we best describe and understand this dialectical relationship?
February 9, 2023
Yulia Mikhailova, New Mexico Tech
“O Rus Land, Brightest of the Bright”: Land, Religion, and Identity between the Pontic Steppe and the Eastern Baltic, 10th – 13th cc.
Abstract coming soon…
Christian Raffensperger, Wittenberg University
“The Arc of Medieval Europe: Shifting our Focus in Medieval Studies”
Abstract coming soon…
March 2, 2023
Lilyana Yordanova, École française d’Athènes | “Entangled Past and Selective Present: the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast at the Crossroad of Cultures and Religions”
The significant cultural wealth of the Western Black Sea coast, in the section corresponding to the borders of present-day Bulgaria, is epitomized by the city of Nessebar. Founded as a Thracian settlement in the 8th-7th c. BC, it occupies a peninsula of 24 ha north of the Burgas Bay in the area between the Balkan and Strandzha Mountains. Melsambria-Messembria-Nessebar remained continuously inhabited throughout time, accumulating the material traces of a multifaceted and interconnected past. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this talk aims to reassess the Late Medieval and Early Modern phases of the city’s history and suggest new research questions. The first part of the talk shall situate Nessebar in the Byzantine-Bulgarian power play of 1201-1453, and within a maritime trade network dominated at the time by the Genoese and the Venetians. Furthermore, the specific features which rendered the city appealing to families of the elite on both sides of the border will be outlined. It will be argued that these cultural interactions as a whole generated the particular built environment and prosperity of the city unmatched by that of neighboring settlements. The second part of the talk will deal with scholarship on Nessebar. It will explore the topics and viewpoints that shaped its urban biography in relation to a broader understanding of academic trends, but also national narratives and cultural claims that punctuate the period since the turning of the 19th c. The third part of the talk will attempt to chart the largely unexplored Ottoman phase of the city. Specific attention will be paid to slavery, building activity and urban changes informed by Ottoman registers, Modern paintings, 19th and 20th-c. photographs and travelogs.
Valentina Izmirlieva, Columbia University | “How Moscow Usurped the Baptizer of Rus’: From Muscovy to Putin’s Russia”
Who was the Baptizer of Rus’ and why are Kyiv and Moscow still fighting for his spiritual legacy? This talk will trace how Prince Volodymyr was transformed into an Eastern Orthodox saint as his cult transitioned from Kyivan Rus’ (11th-13th c.) to Muscovy (14th-16th c.). Moscow’s expropriation of Volodymyr was part of a larger history of Black Sea cultural transfers that bound Rus’ to Byzantium and the Balkan Slavs. With the fall of Constantinople and the rise of Moscow in the fifteenth century, however, the accounts of these old transfers were aggressively rewritten—to consequences that continue to shape the political history of the region today.
March 9, 2023
Ian Colvin, University of Cambridge | “The Strategic Importance of the Black Sea in the Age of Justinian: The View from the South Caucasus”
My presentation examines what the remarkable sources of the period tell us about the strategic anxieties and impulses that drove increasing Roman and Sasanian involvement in Lazika and the South Caucasus—and the Ponto-Caspian steppe beyond—through this period. The sources for Lazika show considerable connectivity between the South Caucasus and the steppe world, including clear links from the Black Sea coast as far as Inner Asia. They show the Romans’ use of subsidies and diplomatic contacts through and over the passes of the western Greater Caucasus as well as via the cities of the Crimean and Kertch peninsulas. They also cast light on the behaviour of non-great power actors like the basileiis of the Laz, demonstrating how great power rulers (the Roman emperor and the Sasanian great king) and allied kings negotiated the complexities of their unequal relationship. The very fact that our sources are less forthcoming about other non-great power rulers around the Black Sea coast makes the Laz kings an interesting example of how the Romans dealt with them in order to further their strategic interests.
Alexander Sarantis, University of Warsaw | “The Strategic Importance of the Black Sea in the Age of Justinian: The View from the Balkans”
While it is tempting to view the Black Sea as a barbarised periphery, this paper will argue that, during the reign of Justinian, it was instead closely integrated with the northern Balkan provinces, forming part of a similar geopolitical zone, while at the same time being connected with Constantinople and the eastern Mediterranean via the military provisioning system and trade networks. This was a period in which the Lower Danube and the Black Sea coast acted as a platform from which imperial hard and soft power was projected into regions north and west of the Black Sea, including the Crimean and Kerch peninsulas. While divide and rule diplomacy ensured that Hun and Slavic groups remained politically fragmented and thus posed less of a threat to the Balkan provinces, tributary relations with these groups, missionary activity, and commercial exchanges also connected regions around the Black Sea, north and south of the Lower Danube frontier. On a number of occasions military forces were dispatched by land and sea to regions between the Danube and the Dniepr, and to the Cimmerian Bosphorus Strait to reinforce these imperial interests when they were threatened. The Roman government’s reliance on these regions as a source of military manpower would further explain the similar material cultures identified by archaeologists in the Lower Danube zone and in areas around the northern Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Within the empire, the western Black Sea naval route was fundamental to provisioning the sizeable imperial forces based in the Lower Danube provinces. This Aegean-Black Sea-Lower Danube tax spine integrated the western Black Sea economy with that of Constantinople and the eastern Mediterranean more closely than had been the case in Antiquity. Epigraphic and ceramic evidence confirm the connections between western Black Sea ports and the Levant, and with northern Anatolian provinces across the Black Sea.
April 27, 2023
Olenka Pevny, University of Cambridge
“St. Clement in Rus’: Subverting the Latin West-Eastern Orthodox Dichotomy”
The first-century disciple of St. Peter, Pope Clement of Rome was widely venerated as a martyr and saint throughout the medieval European world—from Anglo-Saxon and Norman lands to the Scandinavian north and to the vast expenses of the lands of Rus’. He was venerated in the Holy Roman Empire, in the lands of the Franks, in Apulia-Calabria, in Hungary, in Poland, and in very many other places. He also was venerated in Byzantium, though his cult was not as popular here as elsewhere. Clement’s cult gained impetus in 861, when Constantine-Cyril, the apostle to the Slavs, discovered the pope’s burial in the city of Cherson, in Crimean, on the north coast of the Black Sea, in today’s Ukraine. Constantine remove the relics from Cherson and in 863, made his way to Moravia, where he is associated with creating the first Slavonic alphabet and translating canonical texts and the liturgy. Ultimately, in 867, he brought the relics to Rome where they were laid in the Basilica of San Clemente. Several fresco compositions depicting Constantine-Cyril finding Clement’s relics and dating approximately to the 1080’s decorated the walls of the Roman church before a new church replaced the old one in ca. 1100. In 988, Prince Volodymyr the Great, the baptiser of Rus’ lands, brough the relics of this very same Clement from Cherson to Kyiv. Here, it is believed that the relics were placed in the masonry church of dedicated to the Mother of God built by Prince Volodymyr. Sometime in the mid eleventh century, the mosaic depiction of St. Clement made its appearance among the rank of bishops in the sanctuary apse of Kyiv’s Cathedral of St Sofiia. At about the same time, Ilarion, the first Rus’ native, was appointed Metropolitan of Kyiv. A century later, the relics of St. Clement were used to install Klym Smoliatych, the second Rus’ native, on the metropolitan throne of Kyiv. Looking at the visual evidence associated with St. Clement in Kyiv and Rome, this paper argues against the urge to define and interpret Kyiv’s medieval visual culture solely in terms of Byzantine precedents. Instead, it sees Cherson and Kyiv as key nodes of a medieval ecclesiastical-cultural network that breached the Latin West-Orthodox East divide. In Kyiv, as in the numerous locations where Clement’s cult took hold, the circulating, shared subject of the saintly pope was imbued with local signification. Though widely dispersed and congruent, the story of Clement’s cult cannot be coalesced into to a single cohesive narrative.
Julia Matveyeva, formerly of O. M. Beketov National University of Urban Economy (Kharkiv, Ukraine) | “Relics, symbols, and images of saints in the context of the altar space. From Chersonesus crypts to St. Sophia of Kyiv
St. Clement (Pope of Rome) – the first bishop-martyr accepted by Kyivan Rus as a local saint. His images probably ended up in Kyiv along with his relics, which Vladimir the Great brought from Chersonesus. The earliest image of St. Clement in Kyivan Rus was preserved in St. Sophia of Kyiv. It is unique and has no analogies with the Roman and Byzantine iconography of its time. Paradoxically, the image of St. Clement in St. Sophia of Kyiv demonstrates an obvious connection with such a distant iconography in time and geography as Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna.
According to our assumption, this iconography could be perceived by Kiev through Chersonesus, which was outside the iconoclastic disputes and could preserve early examples. From there the images of St. Clement, along with the relics, ended up in the Church of the Tithes and then in St. Sophia of Kyiv. Subsequently, this unique type of the image of St. Clement became almost obligatory in the altars of the churches of early Rus’. In the Byzantine altar apses, on the contrary, the image of St. Clement was even reduced in usage.Relics, symbols, and images of saints in the context of the altar space. From Chersonesus crypts to St. Sophia of Kyiv
St. Clement (Pope of Rome) – the first bishop-martyr accepted by Kyivan Rus as a local saint. His images probably ended up in Kyiv along with his relics, which Vladimir the Great brought from Chersonesus. The earliest image of St. Clement in Kyivan Rus was preserved in St. Sophia of Kyiv. It is unique and has no analogies with the Roman and Byzantine iconography of its time. Paradoxically, the image of St. Clement in St. Sophia of Kyiv demonstrates an obvious connection with such a distant iconography in time and geography as Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna.
According to our assumption, this iconography could be perceived by Kiev through Chersonesus, which was outside the iconoclastic disputes and could preserve early examples. From there the images of St. Clement, along with the relics, ended up in the Church of the Tithes and then in St. Sophia of Kyiv. Subsequently, this unique type of the image of St. Clement became almost obligatory in the altars of the churches of early Rus’. In the Byzantine altar apses, on the contrary, the image of St. Clement was even reduced in usage.